


Nothing's so unusual in times like ours

by Chrisoel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: First War with Voldemort, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-16
Updated: 2015-04-16
Packaged: 2018-03-23 03:41:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,446
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3753178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Chrisoel/pseuds/Chrisoel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kingsley Shacklebolt - a young Auror in the First Wizarding War - wants to make sure his little sister is as safe as possible in these dark times.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Kingsley is twenty-one and scarcely half a year out of Auror training when two of his colleagues are killed within a week. One of them – Gawain Hortus– is murdered in his own house with his wife and his two little children. When Kingsley leads Miss Hortus into the morgue so she can identify her brother and his familiy all he can remember about Gawain is that he liked his coffee black without sugar but with a marshmallow in it (a green one, he was very specific about that) and whishes he could remember something a bit more substantial.

* * *

Agenor opens the door to the office he shares with Kingsley and holds it open for him. Kingsley nods in thanks, throws his cloak in the general direction of the coat peg and lets himself fall to his chair. His colleague follows, summoning two cups and tea bags along with the water bottle from the sink.

“I can hardly take the relatives when they come to identify adults, but it's three times worse if there are children." he says, heating up the water with a short wave of his wand. "And we have morgue duty for the rest of the month."

The rest of the month consists of two more weeks and at the current death rate they will have to lead at least one more family into the cold, scary hall at the bottom of the ministry. Aurors are faced with the dead more often in this times than others, but no duty is hated more than morgue duty, because there you have to face the living, those who remain behind. Kingsley presses his palms over his eyes in the hope to extinguish the image of the family that had luckily died due to the Avada. He chuckles darkly.

“What?“ Agenor asks while removing the tea bags.

“Just realized I arrived at the point where I consider people who are killed by the Avada _lucky_."

“It's quick and as far as anyone knows painless. Given the alternatives it _is_ lucky."

He doesn't have to say more, they are both thinking of the muggleborn witch who had been forced to drink no less than three potions leading to a slow and painfull death. And subjected to the Cruciatus on top of that, as the forensic witch had informed them in a dispassionate voice.

Kingsley shakes himself and takes a sip of the tea, finding his thoughts going back to the two little boys on the tables today. The older one would have started Hogwarts next fall, the little one had just celebrated his seventh birthday.

"Do you think an eight year old could learn basic defence spells?" he asks.

Agenor knows immediatly who he is talking about. He has known Kingsley's little sister Queenie since she was six months old, had met her when he and Kingsley had visited the latter's home during the Christmas holidays in their third year. He had in fact been the one to provide her with her nickname. When carfully petting the baby's head he had said: "Hi mini-Kingsley!" After being told by Richard - Kingsley's father - that it was a girl he had corrected himself: "Sorry, Queensley then." In the variation Queenie the name had stuck, no matter how much Phyllis Shacklebolt had berated her husband and children for calling her daughter that before finally accepting the inevitable. Kingsley isn't entirely sure whether Queenie actually knows her birth certificat says "Gladys".

"Guess you could try to teach her. But she would need a wand. And I don't think a hand-me-down-one would suffice, it's more difficult if the wand didn't chose you and that added to the fact she's only eight..."


	2. Chapter 2

“Can we visit the Magical Menagerie after we're done with the errands Mum gave us?“ Queenie asks closing the last clasp on her green cloak. „I'd like to see a transforming rat.“

“We will, if we have the time. I've got something special planed and I'm not sure how long it will take us. Ready?“

Kingsley places his left arm around his sister's shoulder and apparates. His parents don't like him taking Queenie on side along apparition but he had convinced them that this was less dangerous than flying across have the country on a broomstick. And Queenie prefered Apparatition to the Floo Network (her brother could only agree. It had taken him quite a while not end up swallowing ash every time he flooed.)

* * *

"Will you _finally_ tell me what the special thing is?"

Queenie had needled him with questions all through the Apothecary and Flourish and Blotts. Kinsgley stopped and looked straight at her.

"You have to promise not to tell Mum and Dad about this."

"I can't tell them anything! Because you don't tell me anything!"

He grins at her indignation before he grows serious again.

"We are going to Ollivander's. I am going to buy you a wand. And I am going to teach you basic defense spells. Our parents think you are to young for it, but I think you are responsible enough and I would sleep calmer if I knew you armed and able to defend yourself."

She stares at him with big brown eyes and nods.

* * *

 

Ollivander's shop is as gloomy and dusty as ever. (Kingsley is not sure wether the man likes the look or dust produced by manufacturing wands resists normal dusting spells. Or maybe Ollivander is just lazy.) Ollivander himself stares in the same slightly unnerving manner he already did when Kingsley was here with his father to buy his own wand a decade ago but he doesn't bat an eye when Quennie tells him she is seven even though that is an unsual early age for purchasing a wand.

"But the man probably has seen much queerer things, nothing's so unusal in times like ours." Kingsley thinks.

"What's your wand hand?" Ollivander sets his tape measure to work. Whatever it is he gains from the information it's gathering. Especially the distance between the nostrils always struck Kingsley as _very_ wand-unrelated. But then again wand lore is said to be one of the most mysterious branches of magic.

"Left" Queenie answers, standing very still. Kingsley's guess is that she is subconciously thinking about being measured for clothes and their father has an unlucky habit of accidentely bringing the one or other pin into that procedure.

"Let's see what could suit you." Ollivander summons a couple of boxes and hands Queenie the first wand.

"Maple and unicorn hair. Twelve inches. Whippy. No."

The second wand is discarded before Queenie has time to even close her fingers completly around it.

He looks at the boxes for a moment, deep in thoughts, before he turns and produces another box from the shelf behind him.

"Maybe it's the right one this time. I let both your eldest sister and your brother try this one, but it didn't chose them. Ebony and unicorn hair, nine and a half inches long, springy."

He offers Queenie the dark wand. Kingsley actually recognises it, for its handle is carved into the image of a tulip interlaced with a tulip leaf. 

The very moment Queenie's fingertips come into contact with the wood her eyes grow wide and Kingsley doesn't have to wait for the sparks flying from the wand when Queenie lets it swich through the air to know it is the right one.

* * *

"It's very pretty, isn't it?" Queenie gazes at her new wand adoringly, sitting on the floor of her room.

His first impuls is to tell her the appereance of a wand has no meaning at all, but he closes his mouth before the words leave his mouth. It is the wand that has chosen her, it will work the best for her, what is the harm if she finds it pretty, too? She is a little child, she's allowed to find things pretty.

He shows her how to best stow the wand in the holster Agenor gave him (who had got it from his great-grandaunt, a specialist in wand holsters) and the best way to hold it. He watches his little sister when she eagerly repeats the wand movements he shows her. _Lumos_ , that's easy and after one and a half hours she manages it. Her whole face is glowing and he reminds her again not to tell their parents.

He continues to teach her in secret and though it takes weeks she does manages a simple shield spell and two or three disorientating ones. He knows that realisticly this won't save her in case of a Death eater attack but he tells himself (and hopes and _hopes_ ) that if she knows it she will never need it.


End file.
